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5 ways to be a top presenter – meet the F!RST framework

Your challenge

Think about it – I bet many of the presentations you sit through are either a bit dull, or just plain awful, right? (We’ve all seen those!)

But wait a second…

What are you doing to radically distanceyour presentations from those?

It’s tough, because you likely use basically the same software, skill-set and approach as roughly 99% of presenters. So unless you take clear steps, sadly your audience will see your work as being just the same as all the rest!

What’s in the rest of this post?

How this blog can help you

Luckily, there are more and more books and blogs available to help us all present better, like these 6 of the world’s best blogs for presenters, and the ones listed in the blogroll on my home page. In particular, this blog gives you tips specifically designed to distinguish your work from other people’s.

For starters, within 5 minutes, this post gives you just a quick taste of a 5-part framework for being a top presenter. (In later posts, you’ll see in detail – with examples – how to use the framework.)

The framework gives you specific tips whatever your current approach, so it doesn’t matter whether you use PowerPoint or another tool – like Prezi, Keynote, Google Docs, or OpenOffice Impress – or even if you present without slides.

Until now, I’d been seeking just 1 “magic bullet” framework – if you forgive the pun! But I’ve realised presenting is too diverse and complex for that. So over the coming months, I’ll present several frameworks that all make presenting easier and more effective for you.

The “i” in F!RST is lowercase (and inverted!) to make it stand out, because it’s short for the most crucial but often ignored aspect of presenting. To give it proper weight, you’ll find what the “i” stands for (and how to make it work for you) in the last post of the series.

At first sight, you might think being remembered and standing out (for instance) are much the same, but don’t worry – as the series goes on, the differences between the framework’s parts will become much clearer.

So as promised, here’s the outline of the F!RST framework’s 4 capital letters…

When you begin preparing a presentation, the first thing to do is to focus attention – your own. And naturally when you come to actually present, you also need to focus (and keep) your audience’s attention. You can focus both parties better by using another acronym – AIM – which stands for:

For your audience to do what your talk suggests (such as buying your product, or supporting you or your cause), being rememberedis vital.

In everyday life, how might you remind a friend of something when you’re apart? It’s likely you’d send them a text message – an SMS. Well, SMS is a 3rd acronym I’ll use, this time for the “be Remembered” part of the F!RST framework. It stands for:

Sadly, today dismal presentations are the norm, so naturally you want to do far better than that. Standing out is similar to being remembered, but it also implies your talk has more credibility than most.

How can you make your talk stand out and be more credible? Well for one thing, avoid what most presenters do. For instance, as renowned public-speaking expert Olivia Mitchell put it:

“Bullet-point slides damage your brand.”

So to stand out from the crowd, instead of bullets I recommend you use 4 types of content we’ll call PQRS, which stands for:

So I hope you’ll read the next part of the series, which includes over 20 tips on how you can strongly focus attention – your own and your audience’s. And as you think about your current approach, I hope you enjoy this quote from Tim Berners-Lee as much as I do:

Yes its quite a unique tool, your welcome to email me should you have any questions regarding it. And I am looking forward to getting another perspective on how the best presentations are given. This will allow us to adjust our presentations and make additions or accessories for the product to suit.

I don’t personally use an i-Pad to do my presentations, but i sell to clients who do. They are best used in a smaller group situation. The below links are to show you images of the product we developed for a client who wanted to present using an i-Pad and this has now become a very popular item. It allows an i-pad presentation without having to pass around the i-Pad or prop it up.A4 insertsA3 inserts

I also find that a timed, or remote activated slide show is better as this means you do not have to touch the screen and leave finger prints.

Excellent – thanks also for your links! The capsules look like a really slick way to present with an iPad.

Good thinking about not leaving fingerprints, too! I don’t know much about iPads, but have heard (e.g. from Rick Altman) that connectivity (to projectors etc) can be a problem if you try to present to more than only about 2 people.

My first thoughts about your framework are: WOW. I love that you took the time to come up with the first acronym as well as the pictures which were chosen to represent each point. Also what is great is that you have so many links linking to other related blogs of yours. Very impressive blog.
As to standing out, maybe you might find this post helpful: http://blog.slideshop.com/2012/05/29/white-space-the-art-of-emptiness-2/

It is about how using more white space in slides help your slides to stand out more.